


10 Letters from five Octobers

by veeagainst



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Humor, First War with Voldemort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 10:45:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veeagainst/pseuds/veeagainst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A glimpse into an epistolary exchange spanning 1978-1982</p>
            </blockquote>





	10 Letters from five Octobers

Padfoot,                                  3 October, 1978

            Prongs passes on the news that he’s thinking about buying an engagement ring. Lily passes on the news that you’d best get a shorter haircut if you’re going to be in the wedding, or else you will just confirm her parents’ belief that all wizards are secretly long-haired hippies who haven’t yet realised that the Beatles broke up.

            (By the way, Padfoot, the Beatles did break up. Terribly sorry to have to be the one to inform, and all that, seeing as you’ve had Sgt. Pepper’s in your record player since I gave you both as a flat-warming gift.)

            Speaking of the flat, things are well here. Thank you again for asking me to stay here while you are in France. Hopefully you will be returning soon, because the neighbours are becoming compliant without the ever-present threat of you singing in the shower at all times of the day. One kind old lady – she lives in 303, I think – asked me if I knew what had become of that “black-haired hell-raiser of a lad.” I told her not to worry, as you were certainly returning soon, and I hate to say it, but she looked disappointed.

                                                                        Write soon,

                                                                                    Moony

 

 

Loony loopy Moony, (10 Oct ’78)

            Of course she was disappointed! (the old lady) She wants a good-looking bloke living upstairs, not me!

            (don’t you worry, my ego is intact… I am surrounded by sensual French women who want my body at all times)

            I’ve been working every day, except, oddly, the day I got your most recent letter. It came in the morning. I cried until 2 in the afternoon – although on occasion I would get up and beat my fist into the wall – and then I managed to pull myself together enough to get up and walk out to the Rue-du-somewhere-or-other and purchase solo albums by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. I spent the night drinking fine French wine and devising wilder and wilder spells to meld the two together.

            Results: NOT POSITIVE.

            ARE THE GATES TO PEPPERLAND CLOSED FOREVER?!

            Naturally, I can say no more. About my activities relating to things of which we cannot speak. You know what I mean.

            Tell Lily I won’t cut my hair, as I am in mourning (see above). I already received six letters filled with indecision from Prongs. Told him to go for it; I can’t wait for an excuse to be done with this work and come home.

            Speaking of home, you’d best stay in my flat from now on. Don’t know how often either of us will be home. It will just make things easier if we share the flat.

            All right, back to my bed full of French girls! NOW YOU HAVE TO WRITE SOON.     Messr. Padfoot

 

 

Dear Sirius,                                                                 18 Oct. 1979

            I don’t know what to write.

~~I can’t really explain what I was thinking~~

~~I was thinking about you and I haven’t stopped thinking about last night and what~~

           ~~I thought that when you said you were “just passing through” that~~

~~I never thought that what happened last night was going to happen.~~

            I’m not making sense. I don’t know when I’ll be home again. I don’t know when we’ll be in the same town, in the same inn, on a rainy night, or when we’ll be back in the flat together, but I want you to know that it wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t a mistake, and I don’t know what to do or where this is going or even really what happened between us last night that we never noticed happening before – or maybe you noticed it happening but you didn’t tell me – were you keeping it from me, when did you notice this happening, what did you mean by last night?

            Please tell me if it was a mistake or if you regret it.

            Please write soon.

            Yours,

            Remus

 

R, (18 Oct ’79)

I think I’m falling in love with you.

S

PS – And you know, I’m not really surprised… are you?

 

 

Dear Sirius,                                                     4 October, 1980

            He sent me to a Muggle place. They’ve got a telly-vision and everything. I turned it on last night just so I could hear a human voice and fell asleep. One more night here, to clear up any suspicions, and then I’m coming home.

            Just thinking those words makes me shiver. I’m coming home, and there you’ll be. Is it raining in London? What can you see out the window? It’s been nothing but cold here, grey misty days that remind me of the Forest in autumn. Remember the long walks we used to take, after James and Lily became attached at the hip and Peter and Emmeline were having whatever it was that they were having? Sometimes I look back on our years at school and I think about how we should have seen this coming. And I realize that even though it has only been a year, it seems like it’s something that we had forever, even if we didn’t articulate it.

            (I can hear you now, and no, articulation does not involve _that)_

            Things were not as successful as I would have hoped here, but it doesn’t matter. I’m coming home tomorrow. I’m lying in bed, head on my pillow, writing this at a weird angle (I’m guessing that the handwriting is nearly illegible), falling asleep and thinking about you.

                                                Love, Remus

 

Moony, (6 Oct ’80)

            I wish that things hadn’t come up and you could have come home yesterday like we thought you could. I had a surprise planned. Oh well, we’ll just do it when you do get home, whenever that will be.

            It has been raining in London off and on for the past week. Yesterday afternoon I was sitting at the window in the kitchen/dining room/library/sitting room, and the rain was coming down so hard that everything through the window looked blurry. I could just make out the shapes of the buses going up and down the street, stopping at the tube station and moving on, and all the people getting off and getting on again, moving and travelling and never stopping. I thought about us. I thought about how we keep getting on in one place and getting off in another, but there is always this one place, in a flat no bigger than my mother’s shoe closet, somewhere down a side street in London, anonymous and special to no one but us, but it’s ours, and no matter where we go or how many buses we get onto and off of we’ll always know where it is and who is there waiting for us.

            You can tell that I miss you when I take the time to write out all of that instead of just waiting to say it. I think that you’d just put down the paper for a minute and smile at me and let me talk, and when I was done, you’d go back to your paper but you’d be smiling still. I wish you were here to smile at me.

            This is what happens when you write letters to your lover in wartime. You start writing like you’re never going to see him again, but of course I am, so I’m just being stupid and worrying about nothing.

                                                Hurry home because I love you. Pads

 

 

Dear Sirius,                                                                 20 October, 198111:20 pm

            I just thought I’d leave this note here (should be on the kitchen table unless the wind has blown it to somewhere… I left the window open because I wanted the house to smell like the sun… it must be the last days of summer here, resurrected in late October) to tell you that I’ve got to leave tonight. I should be back tomorrow night. If I’m not, please contact DD and let him know when I left. He’ll know what to do.

            I meant to see you tonight and I’m sorry that you had to come home late and we missed each other. I don’t mean for us to be trains passing in the night, but sometimes that’s how it feels.

            Please tell me how it went with JL & H. I miss them already and they’ve only been gone a day.   

            I miss you too. Take care of yourself while I’m away. Please be careful.

                                                Love,

                                                            Remus

 

Remus, (21 Oct ’81)

            Got your note. I’ve been in and out. Just dropped in now to take a hot shower, try to warm up. Summer may have been here yesterday but it’s gone now and I’m soaked through to the bone.

            They’re all fine. Peter too, saw him earlier today.

            I wrote the first part of this before I’d taken a shower and made myself some tea. I wish you were here to make it for me because you always put just the right amount of milk into it. I waited for you to come home, but I’ve got to go out again. Will be home tomorrow morning. If you are not here by then, not just contacting DD, but entering full-scale panic attack. I need you to be here when you say you will be. I know it’s nearly impossible, but please try.

            Watching the rain outside now, about to leave. It’s hitting the window so hard that I can barely see out, except to see the glow coming off the tube station, and sometimes a red blur that I guess is a bus. I feel like I’ve been here before, but I can’t remember when. It probably wasn’t important anyway, I just felt like telling you.

                                                Love,

                                                            Sirius

 

 

Dear Sirius,                                                                 21 October 1982

            This is the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write. So hard, in fact, that it's taken me just about a year to write it.

            Why did you do it?

            ~~I left Britain and I’m living in Cairo now but I still think about~~

            All I want to know is why you did it. I don’t know if they allow you paper and pen in there, but please do what you can to explain yourself to me. It would help me sleep at night, and, if I ever knew you at all, I think it would help you too.

                                                            Please write back.

                                                                        Remus

 

Azkaban Prison Authority

c/o Ministry of Magic

London, UK

 

October 22, 1982

 

To whom it may concern:

            Letters to prisoners are not allowed. The prisoners will not be given the letters, nor will they be informed of their existence. Do not expect a reply. This is in accordance with Statute 43543.32 (Prisoner Treatment and Reform Clause).

                                                            Thank you.

                                                            Neil Kerwin, C.C.D. (Director, Azkaban Prison)


End file.
